Easy Holiday Profits w/ Teespring POD (Print-On-Demand)

The holiday season is just about on us, and as most know, it’s also the time that retail buying surges.

For those of you familiar (or wanting to be familiar) with Teespring, and those having more time than money on hand, this is exactly the time of year to position yourself to make some money – and you can do it without spending a dime!

The ‘typical’ tshirt model goes like this: 1) find, create, or outsource a tshirt design that resonates with a particular interest group (dog lovers, college football fans, nurses, etc), then 2) create & run Facebook ads targeting those groups with a pic of your tshirt and a link to Teespring (or ViralStyle, Teechip, Represent, etc.).

Ideally, you’ll sell enough tshirts such that your total profits are higher than your total ad spends.

Unfortunately, the reality is that most people who do this end up with the opposite result: their ad spends far outpace their profits.

BUT, you can still leverage the POD tshirt model, AND tap in to the holiday spending opportunities – WITHOUT losing your shirt (ok, awful pun, I know…).

TRY THIS (it works, I’ve done it plenty of times, in fact I still do it):

The two reasons most fail with the ‘typical’ tshirt model is a) their tshirts simply aren’t compelling enough for people to want to buy, and/or b) their FB ad skills aren’t up to the task of cost-effective targeting & optimizing.

For the first ‘problem’, there are tons of resources available for finding excellent (read: sale-able) designs.

(Towards the bottom of this post, I’ve written up a few of my top ‘secret weapon’ tactics.)

For the second ‘problem’, don’t buy ads! Instead, find relevant FB Groups, join them, become a contributor, and AFTER you’ve put in a little effort being a worthwhile contributor, try posting a pic of your shirt with something along the lines of “I recently designed this tshirt and I figured some members of this group might appreciate it, maybe a Christmas gift for someone on your list!”

Some groups will ask you not to make similar posts, some won’t.

You can also ask the Group admins: “I’m really enjoying this group! I recently designed a tshirt that the members might appreciate, can I post a picture of it?”

Finally, you can simply post it on your own timeline, and then ‘share’ it to the group: “I just designed this tshirt, would love some feedback from this group”.

Since you’re not spending anything on ads, every sale nets you a profit – and I can tell you from long experience, if you do this right, not only won’t you offend anyone, but you’ll get some sales (and profits), and for good designs, AND there’s a very good chance people will ‘share’ it – just like they do when you pay to advertise it – which in turn will bring more sales, etc., etc.

Some Of My Best ‘Secret Weapon’ Tactics For Tshirt Designs (or mugs, or hoodies, or phone cases, etc.)

To succeed in this business, a good design is critical – nothing else matters unless you have a shirt that a group of people will want to buy.

Unfortunately this is also where many people seem to struggle – finding or coming up with a ‘good design’.

The good news is that there are loads of resources you can turn to.

Here is a quick, easy, and almost unlimited resource: bumper stickers!

Generally speaking, if it’s on a bumper sticker, it’s already ‘passed muster’ to some degree. Even better, if it’s on a bumper sticker that’s on a car, it means at least one person thought so too, enough to buy it!

So – where to find bumper stickers? Easy: Google “bumper stickers”, then click the ‘images’ tab in Google:

You can take it one or two steps further – try Googling “funny bumper stickers”

My own approach is to consider a niche before looking for design ideas. Following this strategy, you can easily look for niche-specific bumper stickers by Googling ” ‘my_niche’ bumper stickers”:

Double Extra Credit

“patriotic quotes” for designs marketed around Independence day;
“funny/best/silly/heartwarming romance quotes” for Valentines day;
“funny new years resolutions” around – you guessed it… new years, etc.

You can also produce some high-impact & original designs using niche-relevant hashtags below your quote to enhance the design, sort of like a byline: